Convicted Cardinal Becciu claims conclave voting rights; Vatican said ‘no’

'The pope has recognized my cardinal prerogatives as intact,' Cardinal Becciu said from Rome

Convicted Cardinal Angelo Becciu told Sardinian reporters Tuesday that he is permitted to attend the conclave that will elect Pope Francis’ successor, and that a Vatican list designating him a “non-elector” has no legal value.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu. Credit: Claude Truong-Ngoc / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

“The pope has recognized my cardinal prerogatives as intact, since there was no explicit will to exclude me from the Conclave nor a request for my explicit renunciation in writing,” Becciu told L’Unione Sarda newspaper April 22, despite his 2020 resignation of the rights and privileges of a cardinal.

The pope’s April 21 “death is a great sorrow,” Becciu said, “in light of a relationship that was always frank, serene, marked by the utmost respect even in the face of natural, human differences of opinion: the pope accepted my opinions and together we shared all the choices, even the most painful ones."

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Becciu, once the second-ranking official in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and the pope’s de facto chief of staff, was in December 2023 convicted of financial crimes in a Vatican City courtroom, and given a sentence of five years and six months, a fine of 8,000 euros (around $8,700), and perpetual disqualification from holding public office.

In September 2020, he was forced to resign the rights and privileges of a cardinal — but not formal membership of the college — after Vatican City prosecutors presented the pope with their preliminary findings from an investigation into possible financial crimes in Becciu’s former curial department.

The next year, prosecutors formally charged Becciu a range of crimes, including embezzlement, abuse of office, conspiracy, and subornation of witnesses.

But even after his conviction, Becciu has insisted upon his innocence, and appealed his conviction. The cardinal has said that journalists “misled the faithful” with false reporting about him, and that he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice in the Vatican City legal process.

Among other crimes, the cardinal was convicted of funneling tens of thousands of euros of Church funds into his brother’s personal bank account, something he admitted doing in court, while insisting such transfers were ordinary Vatican practice when supporting charitable works.

At one point during the legal proceedings, it emerged that Becciu had secretly recorded a phone call with Francis, attempting to see the pope absolve Becciu of legal culpability for controversial dealings with Cecilia Marogna, a self-described private spy who worked for the cardinal.

During the trial, prosecutors produced documents — accepted by Becciu — that the cardinal sent more than a million euros of Church money to members of his own family and to Marogna.

Becciu claims Marogna was tasked on secret papal orders to negotiate for the release of a kidnapped nun in Mali — but she was found to have spent the money on luxury accommodation and designer goods. Marogna has separately claimed that she prepared “dossiers” of compromising information for Becciu on senior curial officials.

In the July 2021 phone call, Becciu could be heard trying unsuccessfully to get Francis to agree that he had approved the cardinal’s dealings with Marogna.

Becciu could also be heard asserting that the whole matter was a state secret and couldn’t be disclosed to anyone — even while the cardinals’s niece listened in and recorded the call without Francis’ knowledge, which is itself a crime.

But Becciu’s efforts were not sucessful — the pope repeatedly, in writing and on the phone, denied knowing about or approving Marogna’s work.

In a separate lawsuit, Becciu is accused of forcing from his position the Vatican’s first auditor general, Libero Milone, as a means of preventing internal audits of Vatican finances.

Becciu has taken credit for forcing Milone’s ouster from office in 2017, saying that the auditor was forced to resign under threat of criminal prosecution, for “spying” on the private finances of senior officials, including Becciu himself — though in October last year, Becciu gifted the blame to Pope Francis, saying he forced Milone out at the pope’s directive.

Still, the cardinal insisted last year that his criminal conviction is an injustice that “cries to heaven for vengeance” and said that while he had become a public “leper” during the trial, he had actually received private assurances of support from other cardinals.

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It is not clear whether Becciu will actually attempt to attend the upcoming papal conclave, which is believed likely to begin May 5.

Canon law is clear that cardinals who are not electors have the right to attend the general congregations — meetings of the Church’s cardinals — ahead of the papal conclave, but not to attend the conclave itself.

Still, as the cardinal arrived in Rome this week for those congregations and the pope’s funeral, Becciu insisted he is eligible to attend the election itself.

But the Vatican has said otherwise.

In a statistical overview of the College of Cardinals, updated and distributed by the Holy See press office ahead of a 2022 consistory, Becciu was listed as a “non-elector,” along with cardinals who had reached 80 years old, and thus become ineligible to vote.

Becciu said that year that Pope Francis had personally invited him to attend the consistory and would soon “reinstate” him to full membership of the College of Cardinals.

In his recent comments, the cardinal acknowledged that he was listed by the Vatican as a non-elector, but said the press office list did not have the authority to bar him from a conclave.

“The list published by the Press Office has no legal value and should be taken for what it is," the cardinal said this week.